Large single crystals of oxygen-deficient Sr
6Co
5O
15-![](/images/gifchars/delta.gif)
compounds, i.e., Sr
6Co
5O
14.70 and Sr
6Co
4.9Ni
0.1O
14.36, wereobtained by using K
2CO
3 flux in the presence of additives of transition metal oxides. The single-crystal structuredetermination shows that the structures of Sr
6Co
5O
14.70 and Sr
6Co
4.9Ni
0.1O
14.36 crystallize in the space group
R![](/images/entities/thremacr.gif)
and can be described as one-dimensional face-sharing CoO
3 polyhedral
chains and Sr cation
chains. Unlike theother known 2H-perovskite-related oxides in which the polyhedral
chains consist of octahedra (Oh) and trigonalprism (TP), the structure of Sr
6Co
5O
14.70 and Sr
6Co
4.9Ni
0.1O
14.36 contain Oh and intermediate polyhedra (IP) and canbe attributed to a general structure formula A
6A
'2B
3O
15-![](/images/gifchars/delta.gif)
, which is closely related to the known A
6A
'B
4O
15 phasesby shifting of a B atom and the O
3 triangle along the
c axis. Further study on O3 reveals that this oxygen positionsplits into two independent positions, corresponding to polyhedral geometry of IP and TP, respectively. Therefore,the polyhedral
chain in the structure should be more precisely described as a random composite of the 4Oh + TPand 3Oh + 2IP. This model is used to interpret the magnetic properties, although not quantitatively. The 4-Dstructure analysis was also conducted for both Sr
6Co
5O
14.70 and Sr
6Co
4.9Ni
0.1O
14.36 with a commensurate modulatedstructure in a 4-D superspace group,
R
m(00
![](/images/gifchars/gamma.gif)
)0
s,
![](/images/gifchars/gamma.gif)
=
p/
k = 3/5. By considering the same 4-D superspacegroup
R
m(00
![](/images/gifchars/gamma.gif)
)0
s but different
t-phases, one can understand the structure relationship between Sr
6Co
5O
14.70 andSr
6Rh
5O
15.